Part 20 (1/2)

It was like the Mistress to think of that, and to reward the dog-owner whose pet's old age had been made happiest. Hers was destined to be the most popular Specialty of the entire Show.

The Master, at first, was disposed to refuse the invitation to take any of his collies to Hampton. The dogs were, for the most part, out of coat. The weather was warm. At these amateur shows--as at too many professional exhibits--there was always danger of some sick dog spreading epidemic. Moreover, the living-room trophy-shelf at The Place was already comfortably filled with cups; won at similar contests. Then, too, the Master had somehow acquired a most causeless and cordial dislike for the Wall Street Farmer.

”I believe I'll send an extra ten dollars,” he told the Mistress, ”and save the dogs a day of torment. What do you think?”

By way of answer, the Mistress sat down on the floor where Lad was sprawled, asleep. She ran her fingers through his forest of ruff. The great dog's brush pounded drowsily against the floor at the loved touch; and he raised his head for further caress.

”Laddie's winter coat is coming in beautifully,” she said at last. ”I don't suppose there'll be another dog there with such a coat. Besides, it's to be outdoors, you see. So he won't catch any sickness. If it were a four-day show--if it were anything longer than a one-day show--he shouldn't go a step. But, you see, I'd be right there with him all the time. And I'd take him into the ring myself, as I did at Madison Square Garden. And he won't be unhappy or lonely or--or anything. And I always love to have people see how splendid he is. And those Specialty Trophies are pretty, sometimes. So--so we'll do just whatever you say about it.”

Which, naturally, settled the matter, once and for all.

When a printed copy of the Specialty Lists arrived, a week later, the Mistress and the Master scanned eagerly its pages.

There were cups offered for the best tri-color collie, for the best mother-and-litter, for the collie with the finest under-and-outer coat, for the best collie exhibited by a woman, for the collie whose get had won most prizes in other shows. At the very bottom of the section, and in type six points larger than any other announcement on the whole schedule, were the words:

”_Presented, by the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City--18-KARAT GOLD SPECIALTY CUP, FOR COLLIES (conditions announced later)._”

”A gold cup!” sighed the Mistress, yielding to Delusions of Grandeur, ”A _gold_ cup! I never heard of such a thing, at a dog show. And--and won't it look perfectly gorgeous in the very center of our Trophy Shelf, there--with the other cups radiating from it on each side?

And----”

”Hold on!” laughed the Master, trying to mask his own thrill, man-fas.h.i.+on, by wetblanketing his wife's enthusiasm. ”Hold on! We haven't got it, yet. I'll enter Lad for it, of course. But so will every other collie-owner who reads that. Besides, even if Lad should win it, we'd have to buy a microscope to see the thing. It will probably be about half the size of a thimble. Gold cups cost gold money, you know. And I don't suppose this 'Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City' is squandering more than ten or fifteen dollars at most on a country dog show. Even for the Red Cross. I suppose he's some Wall Street chum that Glure has wheedled into giving a Specialty. He's a novelty to me. I never heard of him before. Did you?”

”No,” admitted the Mistress. ”But I feel I'm beginning to love him. Oh, Laddie,” she confided to the dog, ”I'm going to give you a bath in naphtha soap every day till then; and brush you, two hours every morning; and feed you on liver and----”

”'Conditions announced later,'” quoted the Master, studying the big-type offer once more. ”I wonder what that means. Of course, in a Specialty Show, anything goes. But----”

”I don't care what the conditions are,” interrupted the Mistress, refusing to be disheartened. ”Lad can come up to them. Why, there isn't a greater dog in America than Lad. And you know it.”

”I know it,” a.s.sented the pessimistic Master. ”But will the Judge?

You might tell him so.”

”Lad will tell him,” promised the Mistress. ”Don't worry.”

On Labor Day morning a thousand cars, from a radius of fifty miles, were converging upon the much-advertised village of Hampton; whence, by climbing a tortuous first-speed hill, they presently chugged into the still-more-advertised estate of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Wall Street Farmer.

There, the sylvan stillness was shattered by barks in every key, from Pekingese falsetto to St. Bernard ba.s.s-thunder. An open stretch of shaded sward--backed by a stable that looked more like a dissolute cathedral--had been given over to ten double rows of ”benches,” for the anchorage of the Show's three hundred exhibits. Above the central show-ring a banner was strung between two tree tops. It bore a blazing red cross at either end. In its center was the legend:

”_WELCOME TO GLURE TOWERS!_”

The Wall Street Farmer, as I have hinted, was a man of much taste--of a sort.

Lad had enjoyed the ten-mile spin through the cool morning air, in the tonneau of The Place's only car--albeit the course of baths and combings of the past week had long since made him morbidly aware that a detested dog show was somewhere at hand. Now, even before the car entered the fearsome feudal gateway of Glure Towers, the collie's ears and nose told him the hour of ordeal was at hand.

His zest in the ride vanished. He looked reproachfully at the Mistress and tried to bury his head under her circling arm. Lad loathed dog shows; as does every dog of high-strung nerves and higher intelligence. The Mistress, after one experience, had refrained from breaking his heart by taking him to those horrors known as ”two-or-more-day Shows.” But, as she herself took such childish delight in the local one-day contests, she had schooled herself to believe Lad must enjoy them, too.

Lad, as a matter of fact, preferred these milder ordeals, merely as a man might prefer one day of jail or toothache to two or more days of the same misery. But--even as he knew many lesser things--he knew the adored Mistress and Master reveled in such atrocities as dog shows; and that he, for some reason, was part of his two G.o.ds' pleasure in them. Therefore, he made the best of the nuisance. Which led his owners to a certainty that he had grown to like it.

Parking the car, the Mistress and Master led the unhappy dog to the clerk's desk; received his number tag and card, and were shown where to bench him. They made Lad as nearly comfortable as possible, on a straw-littered raised stall; between a supercilious Merle and a fluffily disconsolate sable-and-white six-month puppy that howled ceaselessly in an agony of fright.

The Master paused for a moment in his quest of water for Lad, and stared open-mouthed at the Merle.

”Good Lord!” he mumbled, touching the Mistress' arm and pointing to the gray dog. ”That's the most magnificent collie I ever set eyes on. It's farewell to poor old Laddie's hopes, if he is in any of the same cla.s.ses with that marvel. Say goodby, right now, to your hopes of the Gold Cup; and to 'Winners' in the regular collie division.”